


Daughter of Kings

by westrons



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Suicidal Thoughts, Éowyn Wants To Die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:07:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26359945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/westrons/pseuds/westrons
Summary: "I would have you smile again," her uncle told her, "not grieve for those whose time has come." Théoden forgets: Éowyn's life has been grief. An angsty, somewhat-poetic look at Éowyn's life thus far.
Kudos: 10





	Daughter of Kings

She is a wild and long-legged girl, vaulting after her brother across fields of gold. She trips over her skirts until she learns to hike them higher, until one day it is Éomer who chases after _her._ She flies home with mud to her knees and sticks in her hair, and Mother is still scolding her long after the bath water has gone cold. She shivers at the words _lady_ and _ought._ Yet all her mother’s scolds are forgotten when Éomer flashes her a grin and tears for the city gate once more. Her laughter echoes off the hillside.

She rides through the gate wet and windswept, the thunder a herald of her coming. Rain stings her eyes when her mother tells her the news. The king is stone-faced, the prince battleworn. The bier stands beside them where Father should be. She runs because if she does not see it, it cannot be true. The bier cannot be Father-shaped. She slips in the mud and scrapes her chin bloody, but she keeps running, anyway. Her brother finds her hunched over herself in the mounds, pounding her fists into the flower-ridden earth.

It is half a relief when Mother follows. Time goes slow while she watches her fade. A dozen decades creep by as she sits vigil at her mother’s bedside. At first, she screams and cries and begs her to _get up,_ to speak, to do _anything, please._ She hits the goose-down mattress until feathers batter them both, but nothing is enough to breach the grief walling her mother away. Eventually, she learns not to try. When this death comes, she is ready. She does not weep.

She is in the dusk of her girlhood when he skulks into her life. She watches as he chokes the flames that lit and warmed her world, whispering his poisons until the Golden Hall is a dull, dark waste. Her uncle, her cousin, her brother--they all fall beyond her grasp, until she is alone, until there is only Gríma. This is what he wanted. He tells her she is beautiful in a sad and hopeless way. His eyes brim with lust as he says it. They are two black, burning coals, anxious to scorch her and devour her whole. She comes to envy the ancient kings rotting beneath her feet.

The world is at war and Aragorn says _it is but a shadow and a thought that you love._ His voice is gentle and kind and sad, for _her,_ but he is wrong. It is flesh and action that she loves, it is waking her uncle from a living death that she loves. Leading her people into victory under a swift and blazing sunrise--that is what she loves. She has learned not to rely on the imagined, on the _I think,_ the _I want._ He does not see this. No one has ever really seen her.

She is shrieking _death_ on a bloody field. She is a tempest sowing fury in her wake. In her heart, she is riding toward her grave. _I would have you smile again,_ he said, _not grieve for those whose time has come._ He forgets: her life has been grief. She has been friends with Death since she was a child, since she threw her fists into that white-petalled earth, as though she could beat her way into the barrows and sleep there among the bones.

She finds Death on the battlefield. She does not die. She will spend years lamenting that fact, wishing she might have fallen with her uncle and all the others, regretting that she lived and they did not. It can be a cruel punishment, surviving. In time, she learns to love the life that blooms around her. The chubby hands that reach for her, and the yellow curls that are just like Father’s. The soft morning embraces stolen beneath silk sheets, the heat of touches shared behind roaring waterfalls. It is a beautiful place, Ithilien. Her life has become beautiful. One day, Death will come for her, but she is no longer in a rush to meet him. For now, her laughter echoes off the hillside.

**Author's Note:**

> I've always kind of imagined Éowyn as suicidal. I wanted to explore the experience of spending most of your life wanting to die, but continuing to live, until one day you look around and realize you've built a life worth being here for.
> 
> Thanks for reading.


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